I said I never would again, but I'm teaching short story writing to 8th graders, starting today. After rereading last year's batch, so the parent volunteer designer would complete the book, which he had refused to do due to the awful proofreading, I experienced the truly awful writing my work had not managed to pierce the void of. Perhaps that was a structurally sound sentence. If so, it had ever so much more going for it than the fiction produced by my three classes last year. The constant running through the work was that if I emphasized a don't, as in "be sure not to have your characters engage in an entire conversation, as it's boring," the kids were sure to write

"hi"

"hi"

"how are you?"

"fine. You?"

"not bad."

"well, see ya."

"see ya."

I talked a lot about varying sentences, about the power the writer has to control how he/she says things. I got:

"She started opening her birthday present and she smiled at her parents and they had given her what she wanted and she knew it and she couldn't wait to tell her best friend Anne who always got what she wanted and her friend Bob, who she liked but not like that because he wasn't that cute but who was always there for her."

Sentence shortened because reality is always impossible to believe.

This year it is my intention to light fires under their little creative buzzing brains and turn them beyond simmer. I don't have an idea yet how I will accomplish this, but I have until 11:40 this morning to get the cooking pot hammered together.

I am structuring this year to teach one group at a time, never to overlap, even if this means turning down gigs and making less money. I am hoping Artist Trust and WSAC will help me stick with my resolve by giving me a fellowship. I did apply for the fellowship; this is not solely wishful thinking. The idea is that I will be able to concentrate on the kids I am working with in a fuller way, and that they will feel my presence and trust me as their writer-catylist and unleash their hidden genius or anyway abilities to assimilate and copy models which will magically appear in their little hands because I will have, by 11:40 this morning, arranged for this alchemy to happen by providing irresistable models of compelling fiction and a surefire, fool proof, infallible, brilliantly sequenced stairway to short story construction which will be spontaneous, zany and infinitely surprising and delightful. Amen. Especially for the teacher and me to read once the gems have been cut or excuse me to return to our earlier metaphor the souflees and stews have been concocted by each stunningly original and awake young story crafter.

What I also want to do this year is to go away and write elsewhere on multiple occasions. I currently have designs on the Whitely Center at Friday Harbor, Centrum and Hedgebrook. Perhaps I will leave this morning at 11:40.

Psych.